From Sir Thomas More's 1516 classic, but elusive Utopia. |
“George
Orwell’s 1984 foresaw Big Brother controlling individuals through the
telescreen...But the nature of imagined
dystopias began to change in the later decades of the century, when
environmental collapse and out-of-control viruses took center stage.”—Francis
Fukuyama, Identity[1]
It’s striking to me, however, that
this conundrum is not just about the
Internet and its impact on societies; it’s also about the existential threat of
climate change that we have, as a collective, allowed to accelerate, perhaps even
to the point of no return. The Internet—in concert with the media--has both
challenged and enabled our sluggish
passivity on this issue, so it’s no wonder that the net result to date is a
mixed bag. The good news is that,
through the Paris Accord, most of the
nations in the world are joined in the first serious global effort ever made to
contain and roll back the threats posed by accelerating climate change; the bad news is that the global leader in carbon emissions—the
U.S.—is no longer officially committed
to the effort.
Thankfully, this hasn’t stopped
progress in the U.S. entirely, even without federal backing, but as a nation, we’re lacking coherent direction
and leadership. Many are hopeful that Election 2020 will make all the
difference in this, but what if it
doesn’t?
As always, there’s an astrological
story at the heart of all this.
So, Walt Whitman and Francis
Fukuyama (quoted above) were expressing different facets of the same essential
human dilemma: will we choose to set our sites on Utopia—a state of being in harmony with Nature (for our own
survival, if nothing more altruistic)—or will we continue the downward spiral
into Dystopia and the social/environmental destruction it surely guarantees?
The astrology, in fact, reflects the facts-driven scientific consensus:
we have no more time to dither, deny and prevaricate on this issue; we have an
opportunity to act, but we must act.
More on this ahead.
The exploration ahead requires that
we be “of two minds”—with one eye on the personal
level and one on the collective. It
will also help to remain open to the
importance of both levels as we
consider current challenges. For instance, this past week’s Democratic
presidential candidate debate raised the issue of Democratic support for
extending healthcare to new immigrants, whether they enter the country legally
or not. This may seem unrelated to our discussion here, but the fact is, the
increasing numbers of migrants could very well be related to climate change-and
its disruptions to agriculture. When communities lose jobs, violence and crime
often ensues. How you feel about all these immigration issues depends heavily
upon how you navigate personal/collective dilemmas.
Obviously, for “zero sum”
mentalities like Trump’s, there’s never enough resources to go around, and
therefore never a need to care for
others aside from your own. When it
comes to immigration—which just happens to segue with the climate change
issue—Trump’s rhetoric and action basically turn the “Golden Rule” on its head,
trying to make a virtue of his own inhumane impulses. Any gains to immigrants seem
to be personal losses to him, and he’s found a base of voters who identify with
this grievance. To our deep national shame, we’re seeing what happens when such
a culture of such grievance is allowed to dominate immigration policy.
With his “zero tolerance” border
policy, Trump has masterfully twisted our legitimate concern for border
security into a pretext for viciously punishing
asylum seekers just for showing up. What’s in this for him, we might
wonder.
It seems, in fact, that Trump takes
this issue personally, as though the
funds to care for detained children are coming out of his pocket, and his perpetual state of outrage helps him dominate
nearly every news cycle. No surprise here—we’ve seen in his natal chart why attention = power for him (his 10-4 Sun-Moon
Gemini/Sagittarius oppositions, with Gemini Sun ruling his Leo Mars-ASC
and Pluto). But do his supporters really understand the horrors
they’re cheering on?
In fact, more than one of this past
week’s Democratic debaters pointed out the collective
economic and social gains that we all enjoy when immigrants are treated
humanely and are able to become productive members of society. Access to healthcare
is personally essential for
productivity, but ultimately, we all have
a stake in our neighbors’ well being.
Yes, we can look at this as a
moral/ethical issue, but it’s also just common sense: the collective simply
cannot be healthy and stable if the individuals within it are in physical and
existential pain and trauma. This extends to the so-called “opioid epidemic” as
well—another Neptunian nightmare for the nation and another instance in
which the personal and collective trauma are so tightly interwoven.
Success and compassion can co-exist. |
We can choose to ignore and/or deny
that “we are all in this together” in such issues, or we can acknowledge and
embrace this reality with altruism and compassion—the lighter Piscean impulses ruled
by Neptune
and generous-of-spirit Jupiter. At their best, these
energies evoke Christ’s “loaves and fishes” lesson about trusting the abundance
of the universe. They evoke the power of the collective to solve problems and
fulfill needs that seem personally insurmountable.
Significantly, Neptune and Jupiter
are now transiting square from Pisces
to Sagittarius: that “quality
of mercy” the character Portia refers to in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is, unfortunately,
truly “strained” these days. Under these conditions, we are challenged to prove
the depths of our humanity, the generosity of our collective Spirit.
Or we can choose the path of least
resistance, to essentially choke off any compassionate impulses because that
suits someone’s personal/political purposes. If Trump were to support healthcare as a human right, for instance, his
ability to stoke up resentment would lose its punch, so he continues to
undermine the Affordable Care Act, promising a “better plan” that shows no
signs of happening. Never mind that the ACA probably helps many of his own constituents.
Because both immigration and climate
change are influenced by the same planetary energies (and are, indeed, related),
the same choices and dynamics apply to both. So Trump’s willful refusal to
acknowledge the challenge of climate change has a lot in common with his
approach to border issues. If he acknowledges that the U.S. is responsible for
the highest percentage of carbon emissions and therefore has a collective duty towards the Earth and to those
populations suffering the ravages of a warming planet…well, you can see where
this is going. He isn’t a fan of being held accountable personally, so why would he accept collective responsibility?
In fact, with Saturn and Pluto
nearly conjunct, at the waning end of their 1982 cycle, the Cosmos is forcing the issue of collective
responsibility, and even Trump’s attempts to gaslight the American public on the climate change issue by denying
that what we’re seeing in our local weather events is actually significant, we will have to deal squarely with the
consequences of our choices. Neptunian denial will give way to
reality and accountability, probably sooner than we think.
Reinforcing and enabling this denialism
(at times also gaslighting) are
pernicious websites that claim some kind of climate conspiracy among scientists
and attempt to discredit anything that emerges from that community; is it any
wonder that our ability as a nation to unite around the massive effort needed
to confront climate change has been seriously wanting?
To put it mildly, our national consciousness
has been rendered fragmented, at best. At times it seems that our public will
power has gone totally impotent: this can happen under Neptune’s spell, but
other planetary energies are demanding better of us.
For instance, Saturn demands rigor
and commitment to supporting the scientific community; saying “I don’t believe
them” is a Neptunian response to earth-bound realities (Saturn)
that really shouldn’t be negotiable. Scientific data and studies are—and should be--verified by clear-minded experts, but to continue allowing the facts and
the truth itself to be eroded in favor of conveniently ideological “beliefs” is
one of the lowest expressions of Neptune. It’s right down there with
gaslighting and mentally abusing a spouse for the sake of control.
We're seeing a lot of this in these Neptunian times! |
It’s worth noting that irresponsible
players on the Internet have greatly exacerbated the confusion regarding
climate change and politics, making freedom of the mainstream, fact-checked
press all the more essential. No surprise, Trump attacks the free press (trying to replace it with his media boosters) every
chance he gets—most recently from his meeting with Putin at the G-20! The free
press (“Fake news” to him) is the enemy and a “problem,” as
he told Putin, a dictator whose government has killed journalists who dare to speak the truth.
So, while the Internet is a
technical marvel that can be used for the loftiest human purposes, it also enables
the lowest human impulses. It’s the “matrix,” if you will, that allows
expression to what psychologist Carl Jung termed the “collective unconscious,”
a phenomenon that evokes Neptune in mundane astrology. Jung’s
explanation for this enigma:
The collective
unconscious - so far as we can say anything about it at all - appears to
consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths
of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be
taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious... We can therefore
study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the
analysis of the individual.—The Structure of the Psyche, CW 8, par. 325.
In other words, the individual’s
psychology and behavior and the collective
contents of the Human psyche-writ-large—the realm of Myth—are deeply
enmeshed and interdependent. This primordial, transcendental plane of
Humanity’s being is ruled in astrology by the collective planets, of course—Uranus,
Neptune and Pluto, and it’s in times like these that we are forced to
confront the “lesser angels” of our collective nature.
That savage, competitive
dimension of the natural world —what poet Tennyson famously called “red in tooth and claw”— is triggered by
survival anxiety (Pluto). Yes, life feeds upon life (even vegans are guilty of this), but civilizations have
sought to consciously balance out and “humanize” our life in Nature with
laws and standards (Saturn), collective action (Uranus) and compassion (Neptune).
Unfortunately, the higher
impulses of civilization are a bit fragile and stressed these days, and our
stewardship of the Earth suffers because of it.
In the final analysis, however, the
Earth doesn’t need Humanity—we need the Earth. Like the Tower
archetype in the Tarot, our “rule” of this realm can be thrown over if we irresponsibly
abuse our power over Nature. In mythology, hubris—the arrogance of “challenging the gods”
(the natural order) was the ultimate transgression.
Outer planetary cycles have greatly
impacted the positive and negative possibilities of the Internet and our care for the Earth, of course.
The Internet’s “birth” was clearly related to the Uranus-Neptune cycle;
this globe-flattening technology took decades of development to manifest,
however the final years of the 1821 Uranus-Neptune cycle and the
beginning years of the 1993 cycle were critical. Helping to manifest this
technology in societies across the globe and thus redirecting economic “flows”
was the 1989 Saturn-Neptune cycle (11°+Capricorn).
The working world was fundamentally transformed by globalization. |
Taken together, these cycles have also been
critical for the love/hate relationship that U.S. manufacturers have had with “green”
technology.
A side note here: I would argue that
Saturn
also rules the Internet
because it’s a massively complex system with
clearly engineered components. Because this cycle launched in
corporate-friendly and Saturn-ruled Capricorn, however, a
sudden disruption to entrenched industries like oil and gas was simply not in
the cards—it would take a long development process. Looking back, however the
“writing was on the wall” that change was necessary and coming fast, ready or
not.
As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
reminded us all recently, the U.S. government has known about climate change since 1989, and the fact is, in 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration committed the Federal government to
action by adding several amendments
to the 1970 Clean Air Act (the same Act Trump is busy decimating). Taking
pragmatic, preventive action used to be a conservative value, but apparently
that’s no longer true. Trump’s EPA just rolled
back the last regulations that the Obama administration imposed to rein in
greenhouse gas emissions produced by coal-burning plants.
The 2006 documentary that gave an account of GM's "crushed" EV1 project. |
In fact, General
Motor’s first electric vehicle, the EV1, was produced in the mid-1990s, in
response to the reception enjoyed by a 1990 GM concept car known as the Impact
and the subsequent “zero-emissions” mandate passed by the California
legislature. Unfortunately, GM sent mixed messages with this vehicle. Its
actions immortalized in a 2006 documentary entitled Who Killed the Electric Car?, GM produced its EV1 (Chart
#1 below) with the ironic intention of proving to California that there
was no market for it. The car had its diehard fans, but even so, it
was discontinued in 1999 and the vehicles (which were available only under
lease) were forcibly recalled and literally crushed so they wouldn’t remain on
the road.
Let’s consider what that looked like
astrologically.
Chart
#1. EV1 (first deliveries), December 5, 1996, 12:00 pm ST (noon chart, no
specific time), Detroit, MI. Tropical
Equal Houses, True Node.
Notice here that the 1993 Uranus-Neptune
conjunction is just starting to separate and there are several other
potent outer planetary aspects: Saturn sextiles Uranus (Aries-Aquarius) and
trines Pluto (Sagittarius). Corporations were feeling empowered and
forging ahead confidently with new technologies. Jupiter conjoins Neptune
(Capricorn)—globalization was being sold as “inevitable” and a
triumphant new world order.
It’s worth noting that Saturn also opposed/conjoined
the Nodal Axis (Libra-Aries), portending rough times ahead for
many (this echoes Saturn's placement in Capricorn, conjunct the South Node today, in fact). Globalization caused massive job losses and economic disruptions to
communities that relied on local manufacturing plants and small businesses.
We’re still feeling the impact of that period of rapid globalization
because along with the disruptions came the beginnings of a gross acceleration
in wealth inequality across the U.S. economy. Those harsh, even predatory Saturn-Pluto
times unapologetically named winners and losers. Despite persistent voices
like former V.P. Al Gore’s, (his An
Inconvenient Truth didn’t come out until 2006, but he began educating audiences
about global warming in 1989), the environment was clearly relegated to the “loser” column.
Since that time American car
manufacturers have woken up to the profit potential in emissions-free cars and
the technologies necessary for viable electric vehicles have evolved, however
that’s done little to shift the deep ideological divide we face with regard to
climate change. To my view, when we see a truly affordable zero-emissions car
that mass populations can drive—a
sort of Model T for a new, green age—the industry’s commitment to reversing
climate change will be credible. Instead, the newly-dubbed “mobility industry”
is working feverishly to launch autonomous
green vehicles that will probably be financially out of reach to mass
populations for many years.
This could be happening sooner than we think, but will it help tackle global warming?. |
Note that this chart represents a
number of “beginnings”—Saturn had just ingressed Aries,
explaining the extra-aggressive edge to the Capricorn and Aquarius
energies at work. Uranus had just recently ingressed technology-oriented
Aquarius, in fact, the sign it co-rules with Saturn.
These were also volatile times, with the Iraq
disarmament crisis intensifying (which ultimately led to the 2003 U.S. invasion)
during the 1996 U.S. election year. Wall Street was booming,
however—illusion-prone Jupiter-Neptune fell in Capricorn,
which had the market flying high—interestingly, this duo’s new cycle launched
in January, 1997, exactly conjunct Sibly
Pluto.
So the business world was definitely
calling the shots, and this helped Bill Clinton’s re-election bid. He had given
them NAFTA (1993, just in time for the new Uranus-Neptune cycle) and would soon
deliver the repeal
of the 1933 Glass Steagall Act, “removing barriers in the market among banking
companies, securities companies and insurance companies that prohibited any one
institution from acting as any combination of an investment
bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance
company.”
This was pure Jupiter-Neptune, an erosion of
barriers (whether helpful or not) for the sake of growth and profit. Many
analysts have pointed to this repeal as one causal factor in the 2007-8
recession—Wall Street was grossly overreaching its bounds between 1996 and
2007.
So that was the environment into
which the first functional electric vehicle was rolled out by an American
manufacturer and it’s no surprise that GM erred on the side of profits and made
green technology a distant priority for some later time. There is a market
reality that companies have had to navigate, of course—they’re always faced
with a balancing act between manufacturing products that will sell over products that should
sell, and our system requires them to prioritize their stockholders’ bottom
line above all.
I’m not convinced
that addressing climate change has to be a negative
for the economy, but even so, something about watching those numbers tick
up and down seems to crowd out all other imperatives.
It's time to be forward-looking on so many issues! |
The
tide is turning
It’s our choice how we use incredible technological developments such as
the Internet, but yes, great power can be wielded for questionable purposes by
those who dominate technologies of any kind,
and the Internet has been a prime example. We saw what happened in Election
2016, when our protections for free speech, rendered dangerously exploitable
because the regulations for social media sites were either vague or entirely
missing, made us vulnerable to meddling Russian hackers and intelligence
personnel.
Thankfully, the tide is slowly turning among social media giants,
who now see the need to regulate what people can do on their sites a bit more
closely.
It is a bit difficult to pin down a
single birth moment for the Internet, but for our purposes here, we’ll examine an
early major milestone, the invention of the World Wide Web by
English scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.
He did this while working at CERN, the Swiss nuclear research
laboratory, where he submitted a proposal on March 12th of that year
for what he called “an information management system.” Berners-Lee went on to write the first web
browser the following year, but we’ll consider his proposal the inception of
the project.
Chart
#2. World Wide Web (proposal), March 12,
1989, 12:00 pm ST (noon, no specific time known), Geneva, Switzerland. Tropical
Equal Houses, True Node.
Again, we’ll focus primarily on the
outer planetary cycles and aspects here—the collective
impact of the Internet will be our main priority..
Saturn conjoins Neptune and Uranus
(Capricorn); Saturn-Neptune sextiles Pluto (Scorpio); Uranus opposes Chiron
(Cancer). Saturn and Neptune had just launched their new
cycle nine days prior and a quick
degree earlier, with Uranus trailing closely behind them—all
in early Capricorn. This was an amazing convergence of Capricorn energies (again, another parallel with our times): as
noted earlier, the 1821 Uranus-Neptune cycle was waning into
completion (exact in 2/1993), so it was putting a great deal of pressure on the
global economic order, and Saturn was busy re-engineering
global systems to suit Uranus-Neptune purposes.
There was a pervasive sense that
“something big” was about to transpire that would basically change everything, and that corporations were
about to “rule the world.” The ground
work had already been laid for this by economists and politicians pushing a neoliberal agenda, with its
“free trade,” nearly regulation-free corporate platform in the 1970s and
80s (i.e., under Reagan and Thatcher). The Internet quickly enabled that transformation.
The company I worked for at the time
totally transformed itself in the course of the 1990s—and a similar upheaval
was happening across corporate America.
Even early on, the potential for the
Internet to automate away thousands of jobs was apparent, and companies leapt
at the opportunity (Saturn-Neptune sextile Pluto), to consolidate and streamline
operations, merging, buying each other out in arbitrage deals, outsourcing
operations overseas, etc.. Needless to say, employees were sold a bill of
goods—all this disruption, designed to re-engineer corporations for a global
economy, was touted as inevitable.
It
was inevitable in the sense that employees had
no choice in the matter (unions were
also being undermined), but Saturn-Neptune and “survival of the
fittest” Pluto helped engineer
that inevitability by forcibly erasing national boundaries and transforming the
working world as we knew it.
The business world was eager to take the global plunge. |
For a lot of companies, it was “eat
or be eaten.” Besides, there was an unimaginably huge pool of money out there
in the global economy and corporations were eager to dive in. First, they needed websites—that
became possible after 1990, and the
rest is history.
Venus (Pisces) trines Pluto (Scorpio) and
sextiles Saturn-Neptune (Capricorn). In watery Pisces (disposed by Jupiter
and Neptune here), this Venus reflected that seductive
“pool” of global money and suggested that nebulous, ill-defined things were
happening in the global economy, but no one was about to interrupt the economic
momentum of globalization. The opportunities were simply too lucrative (at
least in the short term) to ask many questions.
Jupiter (Gemini) quincunxes Uranus
(Capricorn). Jupiter actually ingressed
Gemini on the day we’re looking at here, so it’s no wonder communications
technology got a boost that day. Recall that Berners-Lee regarded his proposed
invention as an “information management system”—what could be more appropriate
than to launch that idea with Jupiter in this sign? It’s
interesting that Jupiter also conjoins Mars and squares
Mercury and the North Node (Pisces) here—this
Information Age would have its growing pains—the Uranus quincunx (and the
added stress of a Uranus-Chiron opposition) reinforced that—but it was an “idea
whose time had come” (Node)—a source of growth that would
be aggressively pursued (Mars-Jupiter).
Despite the dangers of being hacked
and falling prey to cybercrime (security “wounds,” as Chiron in Cancer reflects),
can any of us now imagine a world without
the Internet?
The Galactic Center, found in late Sagittarius. |
One final observation here: Vesta
conjoins the Galactic Center (Sagittarius), reinforcing the notion that
it was time to reach beyond our usual bounds for a truly “cosmic” adventure. I
remember how incredible it felt to connect so effortlessly with people across
the globe via the Internet—connected-ness we surely take for granted after so
many years.
In its developmental years, Internet boosters made a lot of lofty
promises about its potential to forge a brand new, better world, to lift people out of poverty, promote justice and
civil engagement, and to simplify people’s working lives. A lot of those
promises have been fulfilled, but
many have fallen short or been derailed by negative counterinfluences.
And, as we saw in Election 2016, the
Internet can wield dangerous influence, enabling dark forces that are happy to
destroy our American values and democracy and to take us back to the days
before the Civil Rights Act, before the Clean Air Act, and before Roe v. Wade.
Any nation’s social and political discourse is vulnerable when Internet parasites
(Neptune)
spread toxic propaganda and lies designed to undermine people’s ability to know
what’s true and what isn’t.
George Orwell’s 1984
described a chilling, dystopic society, but what we’re seeing now is, in
some ways, even worse because it’s more subtly manipulative. We've seen “doublespeak” of a whole new
order, masqueraded behind a veneer of “free speech” and protected as such. “Make
America great again” has a catchy ring to it, but at times it seems like code
for selling out the soul of our democracy.
Political lies and obfuscation are
nothing new, obviously, but with the planetary energies and cycle dynamics that
we are experiencing now, they have taken on a whole new depth of dangerous
corruption. Just as we must take
climate change seriously, we must take
the perils of Internet propaganda and a White House culture of lies more seriously.
To ignore either or both will accelerate our downward spiral, much faster than we think.
The facts are out there -- our representatives need to listen! |
Final
thoughts
Despite all the challenges discussed
above, I believe there is a lot we
can do to preserve what is best about this society—and to save ourselves a lot
of personal grief in the process. We might start by applauding and listening to the climate scientists who are
no
longer even trying to downplay the seriousness of the climate crisis. Their
message has been ignored for far too long and we’re losing time. There’s a brave
and mighty chorus out there, across the spectrum of scientists and scientific
organizations, trying to wake us all out of our Neptunian inertia.
Unfortunately, the overall sense is
that the American public is asleep at the wheel: the
Green New Deal proposed by
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey
(D-Mass.) is out there, but who’s talking about it these days? It was barely
touched upon at the first Democratic debate on the 26th. Perhaps
it’s time to take notice and to start stimulating such discussions. Neptune
has a way of casting a “sleeping spell” over the collective, numbing
our more Saturnian sense of limits and ethics (i.e., our consciences) and rendering us impotent.
We’re not powerless unless we agree
to be!
We can wield that power in many
ways, but one good way is education—for instance, about how connected and
interdependent the climate crisis and the crises we’re seeing at our border
are. Scientists estimate that climate change and its deleterious environmental
impacts will produce millions of
climate refugees over the next decades, and we can be assured that a good
number of them will be looking for asylum here!
In fact, a
special Pentagon report from 2003 acknowledged as much—wouldn’t it be
better to work on preventing the root
cause(s) of such a situation instead of militarizing our border, separating
families and keeping asylum seekers in concentration camps?
Finally,
if we’re not already fully alert to the problem, it would help to fine-tune
our “bullshit” sensors on the Internet: if a claim is delivered in a state of
exaggerated emotion, if it comes across as being purposeful libel, slander, or
innuendo, if it’s more about ridiculing, denigrating or name-calling than
substantive information, if it’s pandering to natural fears in an unnaturally
shrill way, if it’s accompanied by outrageous visuals that are more like
mean-spirited caricatures—it’s more than likely false and needs to be called out as such or simply ignored.
The fact-checkers are out there, too - evidence we can see and hear is real! |
At the very least, such Internet
content needs to be verified. Independent
fact-checking websites are available for this purpose if you haven’t found a
media outlet you trust. The Internet can be
a force for good, but it won’t be if we're not vigilant.
Which brings us back to the Trump
presidency. Many presidents have been caught in lies and/or played dirty, but Trump
has two basic rhetorical modes: wielding words like machetes, or passing off
blatant smears and lies as his “innocent” observations (“I noticed that…I
wondered why….I can’t believe that…They are saying...”). Writing for The Atlantic recently, journalist Peter Wehner perfectly captures the dangers
of all this:
“Democracy requires that we honor the culture of words. The
very idea of democracy is based on the hope that fellow citizens can reason
together and find a system for adjudicating differences and solving
problems—all of which assumes there is a shared commitment to the integrity of
our public words. If you believe words can ennoble, you must also believe they
can debase. If they can elevate the human spirit, they can also pull it down.
And when words are weaponized by our political leaders and used to paint all
opponents as inherently evil, stupid, or weak, then democracy’s foundations are
put in peril. Which brings us to the dismal, demoralizing Donald Trump era…
Many other presidents have been viewed as divisive figures, but none have
taken as much delight as Trump in provoking acrimony, malice, and bitterness
for their own sake; in turning Americans against one another in order to
turn them against one another. He seems to find psychic satisfaction in doing
so.
The banality and weaponization of Trump’s words are bad
enough, but the greatest cause for concern is his nonstop, dawn-to-midnight
assault on facts, truth, reality. That places Trump in a sinister category all
his own.”
To address a challenge, we have to
recognize it—it’s no pleasure to focus so heavily on negatives, but there’s too
much at stake to ignore. Let’s hope that today’s (July 2) total solar eclipse (New
Moon) at 10°+Cancer (conjunct
our Sibly Sun) will trigger renewed awareness and deepen our
instinctive wisdom as a collective. American ideals are family-centered (Cancer)—we are so
much better than the corrupt
shadow of ourselves that we look like from D.C.!
Bottom line, Utopia may be an elusive ideal that we never quite achieve, but we can resist the downward
spiral into Dystopia!
We can do better! |
Raye
Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and former educator. A graduate of
the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye focuses on mundane,
collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest in current affairs,
culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as
education and health. Several of her articles on these topics have been
featured in The Mountain Astrologer and other publications over the years.
She is
also available to read individual charts—contact her at: robertsonraye@gmail.com.
© Raye Robertson 2019. All
rights reserved.